


Bendy And The Creators

by phantomthief_fee



Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine
Genre: Hell's Studio AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-29
Updated: 2017-07-29
Packaged: 2018-12-08 08:14:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11642526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phantomthief_fee/pseuds/phantomthief_fee
Summary: Three stories detailing Bendy's relationship with Joey Drew, Henry, and Sammy Lawrence in the Hell's Studio AU.





	1. The Music Director

Bendy liked Sammy Lawrence, or at least as much as he could. As a worker, Sammy was impeccable. He did his work, turned it in on time, and didn’t complain (too much). As a person he was….less than pleasant. Sammy was grumpy, antisocial, and prone to snapping at anyone and everyone when he was tired. Which was most of the time. He had little patience and an even smaller tolerance for people. He was at least polite most of the time. He got along with Alice pretty well, which was sort of a point of comfort for Bendy. Alice and Susie kept the guy from exploding too much. But boy was Sammy high strung. Especially with people tromping in and out of his office to get at the damned ink pump switch. Sometimes Bendy found himself feeling sorry for the music director. Joey was a special kind of crazy even on the best of days. At the moment, Bendy was down in the music department to collect the new songs for that week’s episode. They had a deadline to meet.

“Hey, Sammy, those songs ready?” Bendy asked, knocking on the door.

“Right here.” Sammy was hunched over his desk, scribbling at something. He’d laid the sheet music out to the side in a neat little pile for Bendy to take. He was chewing on his pen, which never meant anything good. Bendy shuffled up and gathered the music sheets.

“Whatcha workin’ on, bud?” He asked, standing on his tiptoes to get a better look at what the man was working on.

“The new songs.” Sammy didn’t even glance up. “There’s one part I can’t get right.” He was humming one bar over and over again, changing the last few notes every time. It sounded perfectly fine to Bendy, but if he said something like that Sammy was liable to explode. He tended to do stuff like that when it came to his work.

“Sammy, you gotta let it go.” Bendy said, switching to concerned boss mode. It tended to work for most of the employees, excluding Joey because he was, well, Joey. For Sammy, it did not work. Sammy didn’t do touchy feely. Well, at least not with Bendy.

“I’ll be done in a minute.” Sammy waved a hand dismissively. “You got the sheets, you can leave.” Bendy had only been “alive” for a few weeks at this point, and Sammy still didn’t quite trust the little cartoon. Bendy would have felt hurt if he wasn’t equally pissed off at Joey for enacting black magic to bring him to life.

“Sammy?” Alice poked her head in. “Susy and I need you. Do you have a minute?”

“Uh….Sure.” Sammy put his pen down. “I’ll see what I can do.” Bendy took a step back and let Sammy walk past. Alice gave the little demon a pointed look that he interpreted to mean ‘don’t poke Sammy when he’s stressed’.

“Not my fault he’s a perfectionist.” Bendy muttered.

“Well so are you. So hush.” Alice said, patted his head. Bendy muttered some very rude things and headed back up to the animation department.

.

.

As time went on, Sammy and Bendy began to get along a bit better. Sammy started to develop a soft spot for the little demon, although you’d be hard pressed to get him to actually admit it. Bendy was certainly better about deadlines than Joey. And now that Bendy, Boris, and Alice had been created, the music department didn’t flood nearly as often if at all. That was a plus. Sammy was finally able to do his work in peace. It was debatable whether or not Sammy liked his job, but he certainly seemed happier now that he was alone most of the time. He was almost pleasant. Almost. Sammy’s default state was tired and grumpy.

“Like this…” Sammy mumbled to himself, trying a few bars. “Or this…? No. That’s not right.” It had been about a year since the cartoons’ “birth”, and things had settled into a comfortable rhythm. Sammy was seldom bothered, and so was doing what he always did. Tinkering with his music.

“Sammy?” Sammy turned around. Alice leaned on the doorframe, looking a little worried. Susie stood behind her, less worried and more judgmental.

“They’re having a party upstairs to celebrate the 100th episode.” She said. “We’re about to go up. Would you like to come?”

“You should take a break.” Susie said. “You’ve been at this all day.”

“I just need to finish this.” He said.

“We’ve heard that before, Sammy.” Susie folded her arms. “Come on. You’re going to get drunk with the rest of us.” Sammy made some irritated noises, but was nevertheless dragged upstairs by the two women. Sammy was determined not to enjoy himself. He didn’t like parties. Never had, never would. He stood in a corner, arms folded, holding a flask of whiskey or something. Joey had shoved it at him and run away. After determining it wasn’t actually going to kill him, he’d begun sipping at it.

“Sammy!” He looked down to see Bendy, bright yellow, giggling like a little kid. Sammy blinked. How much had he drank? This could not be real.

“……..Hi.” Sammy said.

“Wowie! Didn’t think I’d see you here!” Bendy swayed a little bit. “You’re such a grumpy gus, y’know that?”

“Just what have you been drinking?” Sammy frowned, surreptitiously tucking the flask away in his vest. He’d probably had enough to drink now. He’d give the flask back to Joey when this was all over, or if Joey threw up on his shoes again. He didn’t go to these parties for a reason.

“Colored ink.” Alice appeared behind Bendy. “Yellow makes him giggly. Just be glad it’s not pink.” She steered Bendy away from Sammy, but the demon came right back, bouncing up and down and running around Sammy.

“What happens if it’s pink?” He had a feeling he didn’t want to know.

Alice looked around then whispered, “He gets either flirty or horny. Sometimes both.”

“Oh.” Well, he was glad it wasn’t pink.

“What brought you up here, Sammy?” Bendy asked.

“The girls dragged me up here.”

“Oh.” Bendy looked at Alice. “Well, thanks Al! Always good to see Sammy’s face!” He elbowed Samy in the ribs. “I like this guy. Well, as much as ya can like him.”

“Gee, thanks.” Sammy rolled his eyes. Where was some water? He needed something to drink during this. Alice handed him a water glass.

“I mean it. Yer a good employee, Sammy.” Bendy said, pulling Sammy down to his level. “Not- Not like Joey. Joey can’t meet our deadlines. But you- You can. You always have all the stuff ready when I need it. Yer a good man Sammy.” Then he was running away, looking to find Boris, who was playing the clarinet on top of one of the desks.

“I’m sorry. Maybe this was a mistake.” Alice sighed. “We just wanted to get you out of your office.”

“It’s fine.” Sammy shrugged. “I can tolerate it.” As it turned out, the party wasn’t so bad. It was pretty hilarious to watch Bendy get completely shitfaced on ink. The little demon even challenged Joey and Henry to a drinking contest, which Henry ended up winning, somehow. The next day most of the studio was hungover, except for Sammy. For the first time in a long time, the employees saw Sammy smile. It was a nasty-ass smirk, but it was a smile all the same.

“How’re you feeling, sir?” Sammy asked when Bendy crawled out of his office.

“Yer a bastard Sammy.” Bendy groaned. Sammy just headed towards the music department, whistling.


	2. The Animator

Henry was Bendy’s favorite person in the studio. He was more responsible than Joey and more even-tempered than Sammy, not to mention a damn good animator. Most of the time after his initial birth had been spent following Henry around and critiquing his art. Whenever Joey was busy, Bendy would hang around with Henry, doing figure drawing and making sure Henry was drawing well. Occasionally he’d push Henry out of the way and do it himself if he thought the drawings weren’t good enough, which was often. Henry liked to tease Bendy about what a perfectionist the little demon was.

“Well excuse me for wantin’ the people to have quality content.” Bendy said, folding his arms. “Now lemme see you redraw that shot.”

“Yes boss.” Henry said, a half smile on his lips. He didn’t really mind being ordered around by Bendy. The little demon was certain better about deadlines than Joey was, which was better for the sanity of most of the staff since they generally didn’t get surprised with deadlines anymore. Still, that didn’t mean they weren’t working hard. Most nights they were up past midnight, surviving on cup after cup of terrible coffee from the break room, or ink in Bendy’s case. Bendy tended to get a little goopy towards the end of the night, when they were all tired and a little loopy. They’d taken to leaving buckets near wherever Bendy happened to be sitting at that moment. Made Wally’s job easier at least, which led to less complaining by the janitor. The other employees had similarly adjusted fairly well to having Bendy in charge, although there had been a few who’d been wary of the fact that they were being bossed around by a literal cartoon. Henry had taken it in stride though, as he did most everything else in life. It was because of this that Bendy would often hang around him. Sometimes Bendy would go out to lunch with Henry, wearing disguises that the animator was sure would never work, but seemed to fool everyone every time. His favorite ensemble was a trenchcoat, fedora, and a pair of fake glasses with a fake nose and fake mustache. He looked utterly ridiculous, something Sammy had never been shy to point out. Whenever Bendy pulled those clothes out of the drawer he slept in, the inhabitants of the studio knew it was going to be an interesting day.

“We’re going out to lunch.” Henry called back to Joey from the door.

“Alright!” Joey yelled back. “Don’t take too long, okay?” Henry just stood there with his hand on the door.

“Well, aren’t you gonna open it?” Bendy asked, adjusting his fedora.

“Why is no one saying anything about what you’re wearing?”

“What do you mean? Did you not hear Sammy laughing his ass off?” Bendy frowned. “Now c’mon, let’s go!” This wasn’t going to work, Henry told himself. Someone was going to notice Bendy was a cartoon and that would be it. For some reason, no one did. Not one person commented on the fact that what appeared to be a living breathing cartoon character in a terrible disguise was following Henry around. After a certain point, Henry just stopped questioning it. After all, Joey had summoned three cartoon characters to life using black magic. Everything that happened after that was just par for the course.

.

.

One good thing about having Bendy around was that Henry could complain to someone else about Joey, someone who knew exactly how reckless and irresponsible his friend could be. They would spend hours after work ranting to one another about Joey over colored ink and beer. One bad thing was that Bendy happened to be a prankster. It wasn’t big things, not really, but Bendy had made it his mission to pull one over on Henry. Nothing ever seemed to phase the animator so Bendy wanted to be the one to finally do it. He’d been told by pretty much everyone that this was a bad idea, but he was going to do it anyway! Henry could see a little bit of Joey in the little demon when he did things like that. It always made him smile and laugh a little when he was confronted with it. Despite all Bendy’s complaining, he and Joey were more alike than either of them wanted to admit. They could both always make Henry smile when times were the darkest. Bendy even had a muppet that he sometimes brought out for the sole purpose of reducing Henry to tears of laughter. As far as the toon was concerned, this was well worth all the times Sammy threw stuff at him for even bringing the ‘abomination’ anywhere near the music department. As the years went by, Bendy’s plan of pulling one over on Henry faded. The studio grew, there was more demand, more animators, more things for Bendy to do. He didn’t see Henry as much, which did make him a little sad, but they still went out to lunch and did figure drawing. That was their thing after all, and Henry wasn’t going to miss it for the world, especially now that he’d accepted Bendy wasn’t about to get caught. There were still quiet moments, where they sat back and drank or complained. Those quiet moments were special, like Bendy’s piano time with Joey. Just him and Henry, sitting around Henry’s desk.

“Geez, we’re old.” Bendy groaned, staring down at the photograph Henry kept on his desk. It was a photo from the early years of the studio, showing the main crew of Henry, Joey, Sammy, Wally, Norman, Susie, Bendy, Boris, and Alice standing in the break room. Most of them were smiling, their arms around each other. They looked so young in the picture. It had to have been taken at least 20 years ago.

“Yep. Lookin’ to retire any time soon?” Henry asked.

“Yer hilarious Henry.” He wasn’t like Henry. He couldn’t just retire. This place, the cartoons, they were his life. Literally. But then again, the cartoons were Henry’s life as well. Henry had sunk every last dime he had into this place because this was where he belonged. He might not have been a cartoon character like Bendy, but this was his home. Bendy couldn’t help but smile a little bit. For as long as he was able, this would be where Henry would stay. With Bendy, and Boris, and Alice. They were safe with him, safe with Joey.


	3. The Creator

Bendy’s feelings on Joey Drew had changed considerably since his birth. At first, Bendy had been pretty pissed off at Joey for literally summoning a demon into his freaking studio. The problem with Joey Drew had always been the man’s lack of impulse control. Not to mention he never considered the consequences of his actions. He had brought Bendy into the world off model too! The creator of the freaking cartoon had brought him to life off model! He hadn’t thought he would have to tell the man who had created him that this was what model sheets were for! All in all, working with the man, especially in the beginning, was completely frustrating to Bendy.

“Joey, why is there a pentagram on the ground?” Bendy asked, pushing the door to Joey’s office open. Henry had gone home early that day, although not without protests, due to a worsening cold. Bendy almost didn’t want to ask about the pentagram, but he knew if he didn’t stop Joey no one would. The little demon would never understand why Joey seemed so fascinated with witchcraft and black magic, although he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t at least a little grateful for it. Due to Joey’s obsession, he’d been given life. He couldn’t bring himself to hate the man, no matter how he tried. Joey looked up, ink staining his shirt and face.

“Ah, Bendy!” He smiled and gestured for Bendy to come over. “Since summoning you worked out so well, I’m going to try and summon Boris!”

“Joey.” Bendy put a hand on Joey’s shoulder. “I shouldn’t have to tell you why this is a bad idea.”

“It’s a great idea.” Joey said brightly. “You can have a friend here at the studio!”

“Joey no.”

“Well, I’m going to do it.” Joey turned away from him, finishing the pentagram. “If you won’t let me do it now I’ll just wait for you to leave.” Bendy frowned and went over to Joey’s office phone, dialling Henry’s number. Maybe he could get Henry on the line so the other man would yell at Joey.

“Hello?” Henry’s sister picked up the phone.

“Hey, is Henry there?”

“He’s resting right now. Is this about Joey?”

“Unfortunately.” Bendy glanced back at where Joey was flipping through the pages of some summoning tome. “He says since summoning me worked so well he’s going to summon Boris.” Henry’s sister sighed and said she’d pass the message along to Henry. Just as Bendy was hanging up, a little frustrated that he hadn’t been able to get Henry, there was a boom behind him. The little demon practically jumped into the air before spinning around. Standing in the middle of the circle was Boris, looking particularly confused.

“Joey!”

“It worked!” Joey clapped his hands together. “I should try Alice next!”

“JOEY NO! NO MORE SUMMONING! GO HOME!” Bendy got up behind the head of the studio, pushing him towards the door.

“But I’m not-”

“Go home!” Bendy got him out the door and slammed it behind him. Joey stayed at the door for a few minutes, trying to get back in. Eventually he wandered off to go home. Boris frowned, looking at Bendy.

“Bendy…..What’s going on?” He asked.

“It’s a long story.” Bendy sighed, rubbing his temples.

.

.

Working with Joey didn’t get any less difficult, but Bendy found himself warming up to his creator. Joey was eccentric, yes, terrible at deadlines, and a little spacey at times, but one couldn’t help but like him. He was fairly tolerant of Bendy’s teasing, unlike high strung Sammy. That was another thing Bendy had to deal with, Joey’s constant pissing off of Sammy. Joey’s absentminded nature tended to rub Sammy the wrong way, especially when Joey forgot to tell Sammy about a deadline and expected a song in an obscenely small amount of time.

“One of these days I think Sammy’s going to strangle you.” Bendy said as the music director stormed out of the office after another announcement about a forgotten deadline.

“Oh, I’m sure that’s not going to happen.” Joey said. He was bent over a massive amount of paperwork. “Sammy likes me too much for that.”

“He’s gonna snap.” Bendy said, looking at his own paperwork. “I’m tellin’ you.” Joey made an affirmative noise and Bendy could tell his creator wasn’t listening anymore. Bendy rolled his eyes. One of these days, he told himself. The next thing Joey did was summon Alice Angel. Bendy couldn’t stop him from summoning Alice, but after that Joey wasn’t allowed to summon any more demons. Joey agreed, if a little disappointedly. It was after Alice’s summoning that Bendy’s relationship with Joey took a turning point. That was when Joey began teaching Bendy to play the piano. The little demon was even more stressed after Alice’s summoning and Joey thought his creation needed a little bit of a break. Bendy had thought the practice useless at first. They had deadlines to meet, cartoons to make! Joey had stood firm though. Every time Bendy began to get too stressed, Joey would step in and whisk him away to the piano. Bendy’s attempts began rather clumsily, which only served to frustrated the little demon more.

“Just kept practicing, you’ll get it eventually.” Joey assured him, guiding the demon’s hands over the keys. It became their thing, and as the years went by it was Bendy who prompted the sessions. It was a good way for him to get his mind off all the stress that came from running an animation studio, and it gave him a chance to be alone with Joey in a way that was quiet. The studio was loud and busy, while playing piano with Joey was calm. It helped him gather himself.

“You’ve gotten good at this.” Joey said as Bendy’s fingers flew. The little demon laughed.

“Yeah well, you sittin’ me down to play this with ya for the past 20 years’ll do that.” He said, not pausing in his playing. “….Thanks.” He said after a pause.

“Anytime.” Joey laughed. More years passed, and Joey Drew Studios grew. Bendy and his friends became more popular than they’d ever dreamed, and Bendy’s job got a little easier. More supervisors were hired and Joey and Bendy got more times to themselves, meaning more time to practice.

“Well, looks like someone is out of practice!” Bendy said the next time they played together.

“Gimme a break, Ben, these hands aren’t what they used to be.” Joey said, smiling tiredly.

“Alright, alright.” Bendy sat back. “You wanna take the next song?”

“I would be happy to.” Joey stretched out his hands and began playing. Bendy listened intently, trying to copy Joey’s hand movements in the air. This was a particularly difficult piece and Bendy wanted to be able to do it right. A few minutes later a junior animator burst in, breaking their brief respite.

“Back to work, eh?” Joey said.

“Back to work.” Bendy sighed and slid off the bench. They were approaching a new deadline and there was a lot to do. Joey levered himself to his feet and followed Bendy out of the room. Everything was chaotic, as it usually was before a deadline. Animators were scribbling away furiously, interns were running to and fro, he was pretty sure he could hear Sammy screaming even from here. As chaotic as it was, it felt like home. He couldn’t help but smile a little up at Joey. The man had little to no concept of consequences, but he was one of the best men Bendy had ever had the pleasure of knowing. This place was his home, and it was thanks to Joey Drew that he was able to experience it.


End file.
